Beam: Beware, Obamacare is coming!

No one will be riding through the
countryside Monday night yelling, “Obamacare is coming! Obamacare is
coming! However, when
we awaken Tuesday morning, it will be here, just like the British
troops who came to the colonies in 1775 to try unsuccessfully
to put down the American Revolution.

President Obama likes the fact the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is called Obamacare. It sounds comforting to
the uninsured it seeks to protect, but the official name appears to be misleading. Early indications are it isn’t going to
be as affordable as we’ve been told.

Enrollment in every state’s health care
insurance exchange begins Tuesday. Those who sign up by the end of the
year will have
health care coverage as of Jan. 1, 2014. There are four major
tiers of coverage — bronze (the lowest), silver, gold and, in
some areas, platinum.

The exchanges are open to those who are
uninsured, those not on Medicaid, which is the federal-state health
care program for
the poor, and for others who buy their own health care coverage.
Additional information will be available online Tuesday at
www.HealthCare.gov.

Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to set up the
insurance exchanges, so the federal government did it. That means
Louisiana citizens
will have fewer companies from which to choose and the insurance
costs will be higher, according to a report in The Advocate
of Baton Rouge.

The newspaper said health care premiums
in Louisiana range from a low-income, 27-year-old paying $71 a month to
more than
$900 a month for a well-earning family of four. It added that the
cost for the average state resident is a little higher than
the national average.

Louisiana’s Republican congressmen,
like most of their counterparts elsewhere, are vigorously opposed to
Obamacare. Rep. Charles
Boustany, R-Lafayette, who also represents this corner of the
state, said young people can expect to see their insurance premium
rates increase almost 30 percent. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton
Rouge, quoted BlueCross BlueShield of Louisiana that said a young
family could see premium increases of 211 percent.

Obamacare supporters will argue that
those numbers are incorrect. However, indications are their numbers
aren’t any more reliable.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said
premiums nationwide are coming in around 16 percent lower that
originally expected. That, too, is misleading because the
“expected” was simply a projection by HHS.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director
of the Congressional Budget Office, told Forbes magazine there are no
comparisons to
current rates. He said HHS dodged the question of whose rates are
going up, and by how much. The purpose, he said, was to
try to distract with a comparison to a hypothetical number that
has nothing to do with the actual experience of real people.

MondayMorning, a weekly electronic newsletter that digests news that has an economic impact on the health care industry, earlier
this month said critics of Obamacare oppose the insurance mandate, the new taxes and fees and the higher premiums that are
coming. It quotes Keith Fitz-Gerald, a Wall Street expert, who called Obamacare one of the single biggest wealth creation
opportunities for smart investors to hit the markets in decades.

Supporters of Obamacare dispute all the critics. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., for example, talked with The Advocate about the
insurance exchanges.

“This is great news for the 800,000 uninsured people in Louisiana who will now be able to shop for quality ... affordable
health care in new marketplaces,” Landrieu said. “With an average of 40 different plans to choose from, Louisianians will
have greater choice of competitively priced coverage that they can count on when they need it.”

Landrieu added that coverage is available for those with pre-existing conditions, provides for preventive care and makes it
possible for young adults to stay on family plans through age 26.

The general public continued to oppose
Obamacare in seven polls conducted this month, according to Real Clear
Politics, a
source of political news and polling reports. The opposition
ranged from 57 percent against in a CNN/Opinion Research poll
to 44 percent against in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
Obamacare was favored by a high of 43 percent in a Rasmussen Reports
poll to a low of 31 percent in favor in the NBC/WSJ poll.

The Associated Press summed up the situation well for persons who will have to work with those insurance exchanges beginning
Tuesday.

“Where you live, the plan you pick, family size, age, tax credits based on your income, and even tobacco use will all impact
the bottom line,” the AP said. “All those variables could make the system hard to navigate.”

Like Obamacare or not, it’s coming.
And, unfortunately, until it takes full effect we won’t get the true
picture of its impact.
Those of us on Medicare or Medicaid may eventually feel its
effects, but for now we can breathe easy. We don’t have to get
involved at this point in what could become the most costly,
challenging and complex federal government program ever conceived.

• • •

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than five decades. Contact him at 494-4025 or jbeam@americanpress.com